Her children had handled the situation as they always did, by going behind her back. Tess's mother, Judith, called her four brothers and they agreed to draw straws for the dinner. The losers attended, while the others made up credible excuses for why they could not attend. Even Tess's own father ended up wiggling off the hook, claiming a work conflict. The Monaghans and the Weinsteins still didn't get along that well. So the guest list was limited to Gramma, Uncle Jules and Aunt Sylvia, their daughter Deborah and son-in-law Aaron, Uncle Donald, Uncle Spike, Tess and, of course, the guest of honor, Judith, who had organized it all.

"Where is everybody?" Gramma asked, as Judith sliced her birthday cake and passed pieces around the table.

"Commitments," Judith said. "People's lives are so hectic now."

"Well, Isaac and Nathan were always so driven. That's why they're successful. But I'd think your husband might have been here, at least. Don't the Monaghans celebrate birthdays? God knows, they celebrate everything else."

"Patrick's taking me to the Inn at Perry Cabin this weekend." Judith broke off a piece of cake with her fingers and crammed it into her mouth. She'd kill me if I did that, Tess thought.

"A cabin? He takes you to a cabin for your fiftieth birthday?"

"It's a five-star restaurant and hotel, Gramma," Tess said, as her mother's mouth was still full of cake.

"Very fancy, I'm sure. I just can't understand why things can't be like they used to be."

Tess could. It wasn't just the loss of the house, although it had been a wonderful place for parties, that overgrown Victorian perched on a hill above the Gwynn's Falls, full of secret places, like an old dumbwaiter and the remains of a wine cellar. No, it was the loss of Poppa that had changed the nature of their family gatherings. Overworked and overextended, he had still managed to throw his love at them with both hands, like a little kid pushing up waves of water in a swimming pool. Gramma, in defiance of every known stereotype about grandmothers Jewish or otherwise, had served inedible food and begrudged them every mouthful. Unless one ate too sparingly, in which case she was offended.

"Tessie, you're not eating your cake," Gramma said now, watching Tess halve her slice, then divide it again and again. It was hard to find a cake that Tess didn't love, but Gramma always managed, serving a soggy pineapple store brand with the consistency of frozen concentrate straight from the can.

Judith gave her a warning look. As if Tess needed to be reminded of the ground rules for this evening: No candor, no simple truths, nothing that can be construed as an insult. Unless, of course, you were Gramma.

"I'm so full after that wonderful meal."

"Well, Judith can't open her gifts until you finish your cake. Would anyone like another cup of coffee? I'll make some."

"No!" Judith almost shouted in her panic to keep her mother from committing yet another culinary felony. "I mean, I'll make it, Mama. I know where everything is."

"Does it look like Judith is putting on weight?" Gramma asked after she had disappeared behind the kitchen's swinging door. "Or is it that dress?"

You should talk, Tess thought sourly, still breaking her cake into crumbs. Grandma Weinstein was one of those older women who appeared to be all bosom from shoulder to waist. Tess often wondered if this was the fate that awaited her own body, no matter how much she lifted, ran, and rowed. Every day, it seemed, the papers brought more proof that biology was destiny, that genetics would get you in the end.

"You're certainly looking healthy yourself these days, Theresa Esther," Grandma said slyly. Tess flinched. Her grandmother's euphemisms had a way of cutting deeper than anyone else's insults. Needle, needle, needle. It was like going to a bad acupuncturist.

"She's a beautiful girl," said Uncle Donald, missing the subtext as usual. Funny, in his days as a political fixer, he understood the meaning of the tiniest gestures in Annapolis, could predict a bill's fate by the way the speaker scratched his head. But he seemed to miss all the nuances in his own family's interactions. "When I walk down the street with Tess, I see the men stealing looks at her, wondering how an old man like me got such a gorgeous companion."

"Feh," said Gramma, unimpressed. "A woman who puts stock in that kind of attention is like a soup bone who thinks the dog has honorable intentions. Nothing counts until you've got a ring on your finger. Don't forget that, Tess."

Which was the only cue Aunt Sylvie needed: "And when am I going to dance at your wedding, Tesser?"

"When the Maryland General Assembly outlaws the Electric Slide."

Deborah smiled at Tess over her son's head, two-year-old Samuel, named for Poppa. Now thirty-seven, Deborah had spent five years and an estimated fifty thousand dollars to produce Samuel, insistent that her child have the same DNA as his parents. As the Chinese say, be careful what you wish for. Samuel was a miniature Aaron and Aaron, in Tess's estimation, wasn't worth anywhere close to fifty thousand dollars. Deborah might have done better shopping around for some sperm that didn't come with that pale, beady-eye, no-lips gene.

"Oh, Mama, Tess is a career woman," Deborah said. "I heard you opened your own office down on Butchers Hill. How's business?"

"Great." The afternoon couldn't have been worse. Tess and Esskay had canvassed Beale's neighborhood, to see if anyone knew the whereabouts of Destiny, Treasure, Salamon, and Eldon. It turned out almost everyone knew who her client was and those who didn't assumed she was a cop. Neither camp was inclined to help her beyond "Hello," "Nope," and "Good-bye." Oh, they had been polite enough; they just wouldn't talk to her. She had never felt so white before. Until today, she had thought she was pretty good at inspiring confidence in people, but her open countenance and ready smile hadn't beguiled these folks. Not even Esskay, with her ingratiating little snorts, had been able to break the ice.

"Aren't you nervous in that neighborhood?"

"It's not so bad."

"Really? Didn't I read in the paper last week that a prostitute was found near the Patterson Park pagoda, stabbed and beaten?"

Good old Deborah. She probably couldn't name the current president of the United States, but she had managed to find that one-paragraph item in the Beacon-Light.

"Was she black?" Gramma asked.

"The paper didn't say."

"It's not supposed to," Tess said. "They don't put race in unless it's relevant-"

"Black," Gramma decreed. "Well, let them murder one another. She probably left behind five children we'll all have to pay for." Everyone looked at the ceiling, and Uncle Donald cleared his throat nervously, but no one said anything.

Judith poked her head around the kitchen door. "The coffee's ready. Raise your hand if you want a cup."

"Theresa Esther, you lazy girl, get in there and help your mother," Gramma said. "It's her birthday, after all."

As with everything at Gramma's house, there was a strict hierarchy to the gift ritual. Uncle Spike always went first, as his actual relationship to the family remained somewhat dubious. The Weinsteins suspected he was a Monaghan, the Monaghans were sure he must be a Weinstein. He kept everyone guessing by attending all events, even ones like this, where he wasn't actually invited.

This year, he and Uncle Donald had gone in together on Judith's present and when Tess passed the large, heavy box to her mother, she had a sinking feeling. It felt like a piece of electronic equipment. Uncle Spike, a bartender and a bookie, tended to buy such things off the backs of trucks, while Uncle Donald had been known to use his state government job to write awfully creative procurement orders.